One time....

Everyone has those times when they had a close call with the cops. Right? (Maybe it’s just me)

I went to a university in Midwest town that was very boring when you weren’t studying your ass off trying to make your grades. At that time, there were no decent bars around campus unless you were of the crowd that went to all the football games and were attracted to the opposite sex. So, Straightsville, U.S.A. If you were gay (like myself) you either went to a very divey bar that contained very scary people (that made you question your sexuality) or you would make up arbitrary games and activities – which, my friend S and I were very good at.

Friday night and we didn’t have a thing to do except smoke cigarettes and drink beer. We had already played the game of putting the bra on the oscillating fan to see who could snap it off the most number of times with one hand. (Fortunately, it didn't take much to entertain us back then) I don’t know who came up with this idea first but we decided to fill up a bunch of water balloons and go over to campus and drive to the top of the parking garage next to Fraternity row and drop balloons on all the people walking down the alley to the frat parties. (I think it was rush time, too) This went very well until a bunch of guys hopped in a car and decided to drive up to the top of the deck and “get us”. As they were driving up, we were driving down. (I don’t think they majored in Engineering). Since we managed to escape with quite a few balloons we decided to drive around campus. Just as a car was approaching us from the other direction my friend said, “Watch this” and flung a balloon out the window hitting the windshield of the car and splattering all over. The car suddenly did a u-turn in the middle of the road and turned on blue lights. Yeah, she’d hit a cop. She said, “Hold on!” and floored her little Honda civic. I said, “What do you mean, “Hold on? Are you hearing yourself? We cannot outrun a cop in a Honda Civic!”
Not to mention we were RUNNING from a cop! The car went screeching around the corner on two wheels and S suddenly slammed on the brakes and yelled, “RUN!” So, what did I do? I RAN! (only before grabbing the beer and throwing it out of the car. Yes, we were underage) I managed to dive into the bushes right before I saw a bright light and a loud voice in a megaphone say “Stop! Police! Come out with your hands up!” (Ok, believe me when I say you never want to hear that in your lifetime) I thought I was pretty much well hidden.
There was silence, I wasn’t moving, my breathing was shallow and just when I was thinking I would stay there for a very long time I heard S break the silence and say “T, come on out of those bushes – we can see your legs.” I crawled out of the bushes much to my humiliation – it was my first cop chase and I had failed miserably. To my mortification, my friend S was standing in the spotlight of the cop car with her hands up and he had a gun pulled on her. Yi! I came tromping down to the street with my hands up, too.

The cop then put his gun down and said, “What in the hell have you girls gotten yourselves into?” That was when S started pouring on the tears. I had never seen my friend cry. In fact, she was tough as nails! I just looked at her like she just landed from Mars. When I did, she winked like “Go with me, here” and that’s when I got it and started pouring on the tears, too. We begged, pleaded, said we were A students (which, was a BIG lie), we were good church-going girls (another BIG lie) we were SO sorry, etc.” The cop shined his flashlight on the beer that was thrown on the grass of someone’s front yard and asked us if it was ours. We shook our heads and said, “No sir! Not us! The Lord does not permit drinking!” Just then his radio went off and he answered it. He had gotten a call – seemed a Fraternity house had caught fire and he was needed on campus. He turned to us and said, “This is your lucky night, girls! Get the hell out of here and stay out of trouble!” He left and that was when S and I realized we still had our hands up. We slowly dropped them and breathed a sigh of relief. “That was a close call”, she said. “Yeah, it was”, I said as I bent down to retrieve the beer and throw it in the car.